I reckon there are a few traits typical of intelligent people - one of which is probably the ability to know the extent of your own ignorance.

__________________“I contend that we are both Atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours” – Stephen Roberts

I think of intelligence as the ability to grasp concepts. Knowledge is the facts you know, intelligence is your ability to learn those facts, and higher intelligence is the ability to analyse those facts.

Intelligence is manifested in many forms and everyone has a different criteria for what they consider important. Some people consider devious people very clever, but I personally consider 'emotional intelligence' to be more 'clever' than manipulation. Most of my friends are fairly academically clever, but then some people we know are clever in an academic sense, but quite obtuse in any other sense, which irritates me personally. Some of our most academically successful friends are more good-at-details-and-hard-slog than brilliantly-insightful.

I look at my dad as someone with wisdom. He seems to be able to detach himself from others problems and give excellant advice no matter what the subject matter is. I have alot of respect for him. People with wisdom seem much more serene than others. They seem calmer in crisis and are able to look after themselves better.

I'm from the different types of intelligence school of thought- academic, social and emotional - eg. I'd say I'm highly emotionally intelligent but I suck at maths :P

__________________“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.” -Christopher Hitchens

Even in IQ test there are disclaimers that, it does not fully test a person's abilities, it only test on standard agreed areas.

For example, it would never know your creative aspects of intelligence.

And for any given area of intelligence, there could still be multiple shades of grey, such as a good musician may not be a good artists and vice versa.

Thus the best answer for this is:

Quote:

Forrest Gump:
"Stupid is as stupid does."

People are just as intelligent or dumb, based on their actions. Even if they were smart, but failed to use their brains, or are constantly in a state of denial, then for that instance you can call them dumb.

__________________Somethings are not as clear as religion.

Those who care, already knows. Those Who don't know never would want to know. Therefore to think has no benefit but to self??

This is something that has been on my mind lately... How is it, that 2 people with the same sets of memory can derive different ideas?

Sometimes when we hear what other's say, we'd think "Brilliant, why couldn't I have said it like that?" The reason being that you have the same set of memories, that would have eventually given you the same results, except that you did not traverse that thought process/synapse route in favour of other routes.

I believe, the reason for this, is peoples inclination, to traverse which routes of memory.

We simply, cannot travel all of them within a given time. Thus, the key to intelligence, is having the right nose, for traversing the right route.

Among fools, some people simply refuse to traverse any routes except those they have travelled a million times before. This is the problem which obstructs intelligence.

__________________Somethings are not as clear as religion.

Those who care, already knows. Those Who don't know never would want to know. Therefore to think has no benefit but to self??

1. Has the processing speed, to go through lots of ideas within a given time.2. Have large repository in which to refer to.<optimized by the following>
3. Unafraid to travel the less travelled/less obvious path in memory
4. Have a keen nose, in where the money is, which path will return the best result fastest (this may be due to experience, where a person manages to identify how a certain way of thinking optimizes his search.)

If one thinks, but has no knowledge then nothing can be articulated.
If one is knowledgeable but unable to think, then nothing can be extracted.

But to have a larger repository or to have higher thinking capacity, which is more critical??

I figure that, even if you had little knowledge (assume being dumped on an Island, where you have no knowledge of survival) but are still able to think, and relearn from new experiences, you'd still survive better than to have knowledge, but the inability to apply it, or to derive new ideas/knowledge from it.

__________________Somethings are not as clear as religion.

Those who care, already knows. Those Who don't know never would want to know. Therefore to think has no benefit but to self??

Any point on that slanting line is the perceived intelligence - as intellect/sped ratio. Note how the ratio remains constant in the graph.

So for example a computer may be perceived as being smarter than a human - because even though it has an extraordinarily low intellect - it has a much superior processing speed. If it had the same processing speed as a human it would definitely look much dumber.

So I would say that intelligence as people see it is actually perceived intelligence - which has multiple parameters.

You have a point there. It's a matter of playing with the 2 things, Memory/knowledge against processing.

Both are required in order to build new knowledge. Knowledge is the building blocks, and only through processing can we associate them together. But I tend to think, processing is more important, because we can acquire knowledge eventually, but some people can never gain the ability to think.

Cultured people, just so happen to be people who can think.

EDIT:
People who can think (generalising again), tend to be more inquisitive, and absorb knowledge like sponges, whereas normal people just see things at face value and wouldn't be bothered with gaining any finer knowledge.

They'd go... "ooo you're smart"... then completely forget about the whole difference between "capisce" and "Kapish"

I have sometimes tried to describe WW2 blunders to people, and what they mean to us. People start dozing of quite quickly.

__________________Somethings are not as clear as religion.

Those who care, already knows. Those Who don't know never would want to know. Therefore to think has no benefit but to self??